


in october

by tinypersonhotel



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Body Horror, Doctor Suga, Gore, M/M, Magical Medicine, don't ignore those warnings haha, more like magical surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 03:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10377390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinypersonhotel/pseuds/tinypersonhotel
Summary: "What happened?" Suga asked as he warmed the iridescent vial between his palms."Teleportation spell," Sawamura said.Suga laughed, despite the situation. "Sawamura-san, nobody survives a teleportation spell with just a burn."(Daichi shows up at the hospital with mysterious magical injuries, and Suga agrees to keep his secret.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I WROTE THIS FOR HALLOWEEN………but then i never posted it
> 
> but im posting it now. happy march.
> 
> (again...body horror warn!)

The evenings were creeping up faster every day. Suga took a deep breath as he stepped into the street, trying to trap the autumn in his lungs. Between the rows of buildings, flat land rushed east for the mountains, where stars were already starting to poke out against the night.

 The stoplight blinked yellow and Suga picked up his pace, careful not to spill the paper cup of cider that was burning his palm red. Leaves scraped after him across the asphalt. Shadowy clouds hung like puffs of ash against the soft orange, like the remains of a bonfire. A perfect fall evening, he thought. He liked to enjoy the changing sky on his way to work, even if it meant arriving an hour early.

Suga sprawled beneath an ancient oak in the hospital courtyard, hoping the young night would keep his coworkers from noticing his arrival. Suga never mourned the summer. October soothed him with its softened sunlight; the early nights felt close and comforting. Darkness offered space for contemplation. Unlike daylight, which only burned and exposed—though perhaps that was his witch sensibilities talking.

Suga pulled out the new issue of his favorite medical quarterly. There was a study he’d been looking forward to on prescription of aspirin in transfiguration patients. The perfect complement, Suga thought, to an early autumn evening. Once January rolled around, of course, Suga would grow weary of the truncated days, confined to read beneath harsh hospital fluorescents. But for now he could enjoy his seat against the gnarled bark, beneath branches shaggy with red and yellow leaves.

Unfortunately, Suga only made it as far as the abstract before a shadow cast itself over the tiny print. “You’ll hurt your eyes reading in this light,” Kuroo said.

“That’s apocryphal,” Suga replied, without looking up.

“So is magical medicine.” Kuroo crouched on the balls of the feet and pried the journal from Suga’s grip. He wrinkled his nose. “ _Long-Term Applications of Aspirin in Patients Following Specific Transfiguration Surgery?_ Doctor Suga, how are you even going to _do_ specific transfiguration surgery if you’ve got glasses slipping off your nose every time you look down?”

Suga snatched the journal back. “I wear contacts, you know.”

“Really? That’s probably for the best. The nerdy witch doctor look is gimmicky enough without glasses.”

He whacked Kuroo in the knee. “How did you know I was out here?”

“Yaku could hear your good mood from the third-floor break room. I only came out to tell you the coffee’s ready.” He gestured to Suga’s cider. “That got caffeine in it?”

Suga shrugged.

“Didn’t think so.” Kuroo ran a hand down his face. “It’s gonna be a long shift. Don’t you have a bad feeling about today?”

“The opposite, actually.”

“Well, we can always hope I’m wrong.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Suga said. “Let’s ask Yaku.”

“Yeah, because I’d love another lecture about how he’s not _clairvoyant_.”

Suga cracked his knuckles as they headed back into the building just to make Kuroo’s hair stand on end. But Kuroo wasn’t taking the bait today. Maybe because it had been a long week. It had been a long _month_ , and they were still two weeks from Halloween.

Yaku didn’t even look up from his clipboard before he pointed an accusatory finger Suga’s way. “How can you sit around reading about specific transfiguration surgery when I’m about to cut up a brain that’s mixed up so bad the patient’s speaking Japanese _backward_ and I’m one body down for the procedure?” Yaku’s words came out in a single huff, and he didn’t wait for Suga to respond. “And don’t tell me I could have _texted_ you if I needed help. Nobody texts _me._ Everyone just expects _me_ to show up!”

Yaku was magically gifted beyond witchcraft, with unusual intuition. Back when they were training together, he was a particularly intimidating character, even by med school standards. The reason Kuroo and Suga were his best friends was because they could stand their ground in the face of his concentrated fury.

Suga patted Yaku’s shoulder. “That’s because you don’t need texting.”

“Yeah, whatever. Just because I’m _gifted_ doesn’t mean I don’t deserve basic manners.” He picked up Suga’s hand off his shoulder. “Now scrub up, will you?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yaku’s surgery did not go smoothly. Suga’s arms were from stiff from the awkward angles at which he’d stood statue-like, offering his steady assistance, but by the end of the procedure, no one in the room was confident it had even worked. Perhaps Suga should have mustered up some sort of luck charm—hadn’t Kuroo, anyway, expressed his misgivings about the evening ahead?

And things got worse, from there.

It became apparent, the moment they stepped out of the operating room, that something was _wrong_.

The hall was still, except for a door swinging wildly at the end, a burst of commotion from the other side each time it flapped open. Yaku hissed, his fingers curling into his scrubs, expression even more pinched than usual. “They need us in the ER,” he said.

Suga had been studying magical medicine for nearly ten years. It had been his steadfast and overbearing companion since the week after he graduated high school. And in that decade he’d spent plenty of time in the presence of gnarly, rotten _stuff._

But the emergency room that thirteenth night of October was unlike anything Suga had ever seen. When Suga had clocked in a few hours earlier, there hadn’t even been a wait in the ER. Now there were sixty or seventy patients all falling over one another, every one of them in visible need of specialized magical care.

“What the actual hell,” Yaku said, before pushing his way into the chaos.

Every available staff member had crowded into the ER, but it seemed without fail that every time Suga helped someone—wounds sealed, sight restored, bones snapped back into place—another was waiting only inches away, in terrible pain. He took mental notes of the injuries confronted, similar from patient to patient, but no less incomprehensible: bones misarranged within limbs, stumps that had been cauterized to black, skin that was scorched through in random, nonsensical patches that resembled electrical burns.

Suga wasn’t squeamish, even in the face of limbs that looked like they’d been lasered off—but the sheer number and severity of these cases instilled in him a dread like he was treading bottomless water.

Suga pulled his hands from a patient’s sternum and passed them along to a nurse. “Please,” he said, “bring them somewhere safe.”

Suga whirled around and collided face-first into Kuroo. His nose throbbed in time with the blood behind his eyes.

“Help me with this guy, okay?” Kuroo asked. “I think he was my roommate one year.”

“You _think_?” Suga asked.

He was disturbed to discern Kuroo’s meaning; the patient’s face was burnt and broken beyond recognition. In fact, the only part of him that looked okay was his hands, skin stretched paper-thin over his knuckles. Kuroo warmed up a black, glowy potion in a vial between his hands, shoulders tall the way they were when he was scary-focused.

“Here, hold his shoulders,” Kuroo said.

Suga steadied the faceless man. “How did they all get here? Are there even enough ambulances in the ward—?”

“They just showed up. Sixty-five people. At once.”

Suga groaned. “Don’t be cute with me.”

“I’m not being cute,” Kuroo said, although the word _cute_ restored his grin for the barest moment. Suga dropped the subject, preoccupied by blood which began fountaining from the patient’s nose as soon as the potion found its way down his throat, which looked as if it had been punched out from the inside.

After near-disastrously fumbling a chant—Suga’s heart pounded in his ears; the patient would have died if he had to start the procedure over—he committed to a five-minute breka. His legs shook as he rose from his knees.

But as Suga made his way to the restroom, he caught a glimpse of something no one else seemed to have noticed, on a bench in the corner of the room.

_A statue?_ Suga wondered vaguely. If someone had placed a cursed totem in the middle of the room, maybe that was what was causing all this chaos. He looked again, though his heart pricked with fear—

And on second glance, it was not a statue: It was a person, sitting so perfectly still and upright that everyone else seemed to have overlooked him.

Suga weighed how likely he was to pass out from exhaustion if he postponed his break another few minutes. _Shit_ , he thought—loudly, apparently, because Yaku cast a concerned glance his way. Suga waved him off and made a rush for the man sitting so patiently and peacefully he could have been meditating.

He knelt before the man. He was about Suga’s age, his gaze somewhere far away. Suga raised his voice above the messy din. “Hi there. Can you tell me your name?”

“Sawamura Daichi,” said the man. He swayed like a skyscraper in the wind.

“Sawamura-san, nice to meet you.” Suga weighed whether it was safe to touch him. Sawamura didn’t _look_ cursed. He looked more in a trance: dreaming off some other place, anywhere but a hospital. Suga was well-acquainted with the expression.

Gently, he placed his hands over Sawamura’s arms. “Are you waiting for someone? Or do you need help?”

“I can wait,” said the man. “There are other people who…”

Suga noticed Sawamura’s hands pressed to his abdomen. Slowly, firmly, he took placed his hands over Sawamura’s and pulled them back. There was a gash in his cargo jacket, all the way through his undershirt. Suga peered more closely: the skin on his stomach was disfigured with one of the electrical-looking burns. Suga could sense through Sawamura’s skin that his insides weren’t all mixed up like some of the others, and all his limbs were accounted for.

“What happened?” Suga asked, as he pulled out an iridescent vial and some antibiotic cream.

“Teleportation spell,” Sawamura said.

Suga laughed, despite himself. “Sawamura-san, no one survives a teleportation spell with just a burn.”

Sawamura smiled apologetically at Suga. It was friendly, though a wince more than a smile.

Then Sawamura’s expression fell away as light began to seep through the edges of his eyelids. Strange light poured from the scratches running up his neck, from the pocks along the mottled skin of his abdomen. He began to fall forward just as Suga leaned to steady him, his arm flying out to catch Suga’s shoulder, but making contact instead with Suga’s neck. For a moment Suga couldn’t even feel Sawamura’s palm there; then he realized, with a shout, that Sawamura’s hand was burning hot.

Yaku was at Suga’s side in an instant, hauling up Sawamura by his armpits. He was too short to keep him properly upright, and Sawamura swayed dangerously, his burning hands at his sides.

“Kuroo, a little help!” Yaku snapped.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sawamura was on the operating table, and it occurred to Suga that he had no idea what was wrong with him.

He tried to keep the panic from his face. He didn’t need his assistants losing their faith in him—two trembling interns cursing their rotten luck to have landed such an awful shift. Suga murmured a incantation to keep any other magic from entering the room, something general that wasn’t likely to backfire, given how little he understood Sawamura’s present situation. The protection settled over the room, and Suga willed himself to relax.

The painful light pouring from Sawamura’s wounds hadn’t gotten any less intense. Suga didn’t think the light was going to run out. It was more like a faucet—he would have to cut it off. And though it was unsafe to make direct contact with him, Sawamura himself did not appear to be roasting to a crisp.

So that was good. Probably.

It wasn’t the longest procedure of Suga’s life, but it felt like it: hours of meandering, in tiny, frustrating increments, often in the wrong direction. At first he was reluctant to repair the open wounds, in case it trapped the light in Sawamura’s body. With some investigation, the technician confirmed for Suga that the rips in Sawamura’s skin seemed to be acting as portals, and once they were closed, the light was banished. Still, there was light coming from his eyelids, too, and they couldn’t shut those forever. Eventually Suga cast darkness over Sawamura, fingers crossed, and the light from his eyes evaporated, too.

Sawamura was stable when they wheeled him into the recovery room.

The ER had cleared out by the time Suga finished up the procedure. He slumped back to the kitchen for a cup of coffee to carry his legs back to his apartment.

On the table in the common area sat the paper bag Suga had shown up to his shift with. Sugar substitute, coffee filters, hyssop, salts, holy water. He hadn’t even unpacked it yet.

_What a night_ , Suga thought, as day began to seep back over the mountains beyond the window.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suga cursed the daylight creeping around the corners of his blinds. He flipped the journal back open to _Long-Term Applications of Aspirin in Patients Following Specific Transfiguration Surgery._ He reread the abstract but the words just swam this time.

The patient had survived, against all odds.

Suga had done his job.

Still, he was shaken.

(Sawamura’s eyes when he looked at Suga, scared and honest, but not sorry.)

Suga squeezed his eyes tight and traced a sleep spell into the sheets of his bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The patient—Sawamura Daichi—was out for three days after the surgery. The hospital had been knocked off its footing since that night, though by now they’d managed to transfer patients to other hospitals around the city. Sixty-seven people had shown up in their ER, in a single moment, with severe, extraplanar magical damage. No one knew how they got there. But newspapers didn’t like to report on magical accidents, so there wasn’t much the papers could tell Suga that he hadn’t seen firsthand.

On the third day, when Sawamura woke up, Suga had just arrived for his shift and was still in his sweats. But when he overheard that the patient in 530 had woken, he made a dash for the stairs, Yaku yelling after him he needed to get _changed_ first, it wasn’t like Sawamura-san was going to _disappear_.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Suga called over his shoulder.

Sawamura must have only been up for a few minutes when Suga arrived, trying to push himself up against the cheap, slippery sheets. He looked alarmed when Suga burst into the room.

“Sawamura-san,” Suga said, catching his breath. “No, it’s okay, don’t sit up too fast.” He guided Sawamura by his shoulder back to rest his head against the pillow. “Deep breaths. Do you know where you are?”

“Hospital,” Sawamura croaked. Suga twirled around to grab a glass of water from the nurse walking in. Suga thanked them and asked for a candle and some mugwort.

“We performed some heavy-duty magic on you,” Suga said, turning back to Sawamura. “I hope you weren’t planning on running a marathon anytime soon. Oh, and let us know when you’re in pain, it’s the only way we’re going to know to give you medicine.”

Sawamura stared at Suga. Though his skin was clammy and sallow, his gaze was as intense and straightforward as it was when he first opened his eyes that night in the emergency room. He glanced down at Suga’s casual clothes.

 “Oh, jeez.” Suga waved his hands. “My apologies, Sawamura-san. You probably don’t remember me. I’m the doctor who found you in the emergency room a few days ago. My shift just started. I haven’t had time to change yet.”

“No,” Sawamura said. “I recognize you.”

Suga turned away. The big-eyed, honest way he was staring at Suga was getting obnoxious. “Excuse me.”

Once he was properly dressed—opting for his white coat, though he usually ditched it—Suga continued his check-up on Sawamura. He was in remarkably good form for someone who had supposedly cast a teleportation spell only days earlier. His torso would feel stiff from scarring, but the damage seemed to be largely cosmetic.

“How is your neck?” Sawamura asked.

“Oh, you remember that?” Suga asked, preoccupied with Sawamura’s charts. “It’s not so bad.”

“You’re wearing a turtleneck,” he said guiltily.

“Turtlenecks are in right now.”

“Weather report says it’s almost twenty out.” Sawamura looked him in the eyes again. “I’m sorry. It must have hurt.”

“Occupational hazard,” Suga said lightly. “I promise it’s not that bad.”

“Can I see it?” Sawamura asked.

“That really won’t be necessary,” Suga said, making intense eye contact with his notes.

“I’m so sorry. I’m really so sorry.” Sawamura sunk in the sheets and sighed. He was getting loopy from the painkillers. “I really blew this one, huh?”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Suga insisted. He tugged down the collar of his turtleneck. “See? Nothing half as bad as you have, Sawamura-san.”

Sawamura  glanced at his bandaged wounds and exhaled with effort. “Can I look?”

Suga peered through the window into the hallway. No one seemed to be around. Quickly, Suga leaned down, showing Sawamura the burn more closely.

“It’s okay,” Suga said.

“It’s not,” Sawamura responded.

“It _is_ ,” Suga insisted. “Here.” He guided Sawamura’s hand to the burn on his neck. “It’s not even hot anymore. Slow to heal, sure, but that’s magic for you.”

Sawamura sighed again. Suga got the feeling he’d only made things worse.

“Full disclosure,” Suga said quietly. “I didn’t tell anyone how you landed yourself in the emergency room. But you only got away with it so far because of all that commotion Friday night.”

“Friday night? What day is it now?”

“Monday,” Suga said. He dropped his voice so even he could barely hear it. “Teleportation magic? Honestly, Sawamura-san…were you trying to kill yourself?”

“No,” Sawamura said.

“Promise?”

“I wasn’t,” he promised.

Suga smiled and patted his shoulder. “Are you good at keeping promises?”

“Usually.”

“Good,” Suga said. “Then no more teleportation spells.”

Sawamura groaned and pulled the sheets over his face. “I think I’ve learned my lesson.”

Two days later, Suga was able to discharge Sawamura—Daichi, as he’d come to know him—with some painkillers, a referral to an occupational therapist, and a schedule of spiritual baths to keep himself uncrossed.

“You really are a miracle worker,” Kuroo remarked as Suga waved goodbye to Daichi from the second floor window.

“Hmmmm.” Suga watched as Daichi negotiated himself into the taxi, clutching at his bandaged stomach.

Yaku clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Really,” Yaku said. “If I had seen a patient like that I would have cut my losses and moved on. You did that surgery on fumes and with limited information. Now that guy’s walking away with some painkillers? He’s walking like he’s gonna be back in the office on Monday.”

“You think he works in an office?” Suga asked vaguely.

“I just figured,” Yaku said.

 “Wonder what spell hit him in the first place,” Kuroo said.

“Spell?” Yaku scoffed. “No way that wasn’t a hex. What do you think, Suga?”

Suga hummed. “I’m still not sure.”

“You _sure_ you’re not sure?”

“Ah, if Yakkun doesn’t believe him, he _must_ be lying.” Kuroo threw his arms around their shoulders. “Our resident empath.”

“Don’t call me that,” Yaku said, wrestling away from Kuroo’s grip.

“Why, because it makes it sound like you care?”

“You see how much I care when I leave you out to rot next time you forget your keys—”

Suga’s eyes slid back to the window. The cab was gone, with Daichi inside it. If they never saw each other again it would be for the best. Suga remembered Daichi’s hand on his, back in Room 530, the day before: instantly retracted, a flicker of fear in Daichi’s eyes that immediately vanished, a trust in he had placed in Suga that Suga felt he had earned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It had been a huge pain to bring up teleportation spells casually in conversation. Suga didn’t want to take any risks researching it. Teleportation magic wasn’t _illegal_ , per se, but it was often used for illegal means, and usually by people who had no idea how difficult it was. Teleportation was considered dubious, and human practitioners kept their distance.

Kuroo and Yaku, though, had specialized in caring for these more dangerous types of magic—Kuroo because he watched too many movies, and Yaku because he prided himself on always doing the most difficult thing.

Eventually, Suga decided it would be best just to ask outright. He avoided mentioning Daichi for a while, took them to a secluded basement noodle shop for lunch, and brought it up as soon as they sat down—as if he thought the issue of teleportation would make for an interesting debate.

Kuroo seemed to take the bait. “Here’s the thing about people. We exist in three spatial dimensions, and we only really perceive two. We’re lacking awareness of ourselves and the universe. Most people who attempt transportation spells don’t think about stuff like how our planet is always moving around the sun, or how the sun is always moving through space. Everything’s always moving!” Kuroo jabbed his spoon in the air. “And that’s part of what makes teleportation so inaccessible to us.”

Yaku rolled his eyes. “Thanks. It’s not like Suga and I went to med school, or anything.”

Kuroo clapped. “I mean, there’s a reason it’s called _magical_ medicine, not scientific medicine. There are rules in the latter system being broken. That doesn’t mean you can break all of them.”

“Can too,” Yaku said.

“Not easily. Not all at the same time. Jeez, Yakkun, you’re always the one accusing me of being overly semantical.”

“That’s not a word,” Yaku said. “But fine. Spells are challenging when you don’t understand the nature of what you’re dealing with.”

Kuroo sighed. “It probably won’t kill you—I mean, it easily could, but it just as easily could not. But even if it doesn’t kill you outright, you’ll probably get messed up.”

“I saw this study, actually,” Yaku said around a mouthful of noodles. “It hasn’t exactly been vetted, but the people with the best chance of survival are anemic. Low iron count helps, for some reason.”

“Interesting,” Suga said lightly.

“Anyway,” Kuroo said suddenly. “What’s with all the scarves these days, Suga? How bad _is_ the hickey you’re hiding?”

“Yeah, Sugawara,” Yaku said, jabbing him in the side..

Suga shrugged. “Not a hickey. When Sawamura-san first showed up, I got burnt. The magic that was in him…”

“Aw. Sorry we didn’t notice then,” Kuroo said

Suga shrugged. “It was a busy night.”

“And you’re a tough customer.”

“We all are,” Suga said.

Later, Suga looked back over the blood work he’d ordered for Daichi. Iron count below 500 parts per thousand. Suga wasn’t sure what shocked him more—that Daichi had really survived a teleportation spell, or that someone with such healthy coloring was anemic. He should have prescribed vitamins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the middle of October any lingering trace of summer heat had been smothered by  wind whipping up and down the streets of Sendai. Suga could wear scarves without getting strange looks on the subway, or public jabs from Kuroo about him hiding hickeys. The burn Daichi had left on Suga’s neck had been slow to heal, which he supposed he couldn’t be surprised about; it was a magical burn after all. It still hurt in flashes, sometimes.

_Long-Term Applications of Aspirin in Specific Transfiguration Surgery Patients_ sat unread on Suga’s kitchen table. The investigation surrounding the influx of patients two weeks prior had died down. But Suga still couldn’t focus. It was all he could think about, his hands on Daichi’s trembling shoulders, Daichi’s eyes lucid with apology, but not regret, the ruined skin of his abdomen, the burst of light and his burning hand on Suga’s neck. Maybe because it happened before his own eyes. When he talked to Yaku or Kuroo about it, he felt like he was never really getting across how it _felt_ , that moment.

So he had let his medical journals stack up by the front door and on the kitchen table, unable to focus on the characters marching down each cream-colored page. Instead he’d been reading up on things like teleportation magic and unearthly light. He angled the pages away from his neighbors on the train and in the break room.

Transfiguration trauma was unpalatable to the point of taboo; even Suga had put off transfiguration classes until his fifth year of school. It was dangerous, too, since the transformations were often unstable, and there were stories injuries mid-surgery. Some doctors described it like looking at a computer glitch, something even those accustomed to magic or medicine had trouble making sense of.

Suga thought about Daichi.

What connection did he have to the others who’d been rushed to the emergency room that night?

Suga threw his latest book in the locker—written by some quack, nothing useful so far—and went to get sterile for his morning procedure in the OR. It was a fruitless pursuit, thinking he could piece together the answers for something so out of his wheelhouse.

Daichi’s survival had been a fluke, Suga decided.

He wished he could speak with him again. Surely he could invent some excuse—call him in for another check-up. Inform Daichi of his anemia. But the abuse of power disturbed him, and it was nearly Halloween, and the hospital was as busy as ever.

Suga’s missed the sunset by a couple of hours. He decided not to go home and just find a couch to curl up on until his next shift. But of course sleep wouldn’t come for him. It was only seven in the evening; the hospital was still bustling, and the sleep mask irritated his skin.

Suga stumbled out into the courtyard and sat the ancient oak, which was shedding its leaves in red and yellow confetti. He still scowled all the way through his latest book, which was comprised largely of anecdotal accounts. It had been written for a layperson, and a gullible one at that.

Then, in a Yaku-like moment, Suga looked up on reflex. Entering from the south gate was Daichi, looking quite healthy for someone who’d just undergone borderline-experimental surgery. There was still something stiff about his gait, and Suga winced sympathetically.

Daichi hadn’t spotted him yet. He looked lost but determined as he adjusted his bag on his shoulder. He was wearing a denim jacket with a corduroy collar, and he’d gotten his hair cut. Suga thought he looked very nice.

Suga remembered a moment from weeks ago—Kuroo’s jab about glasses and the nerdy witch-doctor look. Suga _did_ keep a pair in his bag…

He fished them out, although wearing them on top of his contacts was what was going to give him a headache. Sawamura kept walking, away from Suga’s seat under the tree. _Silly_ , Suga cursed himself. What did he think? That Daichi would see him in his glasses, and suddenly realize that Suga was _smart_? Of course he knew Suga was smart. Their first meeting Suga’d done surgery on him.

Suga swallowed his pride and called after him.

“You have glasses,” Daichi said awkwardly, when he drew close to the oak.

“Sometimes,” Suga replied, immensely pleased.

Daichi shifted. His posture was stiff. It occurred to Suga that he had never seen him relax before except under the influence of heavy-duty hospital painkillers. “Listen, Sugawara-san…”

“Call me Suga,” he offered.

“Suga.” His eye contact made Suga feel present. “I need to apologize. I lied.”

Suga sat up. “Daichi, are you alright?”

Daichi shook his head. “I’m fine. I don’t know how you fixed me, but—I can say to you with confidence that that night in the ER turned out far better than I had ever dared to hope.

“But it’s not over,” Daichi said.

“I haven’t learned my lesson,” Daichi said.

“I’m going to need your help again,” he said, and Suga took a deep breath. He could taste the fallen leaves.

“Go on,” Suga said, beneath the ancient oak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suga waited anxiously in his apartment. Just before sunset he made one more trip to the supermarket for instant coffee. He’d gathered the supplies he needed; substituted where he could. Stealing from the hospital was out of the question, but Suga, a witch since before he knew what witches were, kept a well-stocked closet in his apartment. And, to be honest, by the time the ash-and-ember sky had gone black, Suga was starting to worry Daichi wasn’t going to show up at all.

Teleportation magic was dangerous, after all. Suga had begun toying with the idea that it was Daichi’s low iron count that had saved him in the first place. But the hypothesis felt too hopeful for a night as grave as the one he faced now.

Beneath the ancient oak, Suga had pressed his address into Daichi’s hand like a secret.

_I appreciate it,_ Daichi had said in return. His words had felt sturdy there in the light of the courtyard, but now with a long, empty night stretching before him, Suga began to feel more and more uneasy. His couldn’t focus well enough to read, and the radio just grated on his nerves. He settled for staring at the fireplace instead, the flames beating like wings.

Then, about half-past-midnight, Daichi appeared in his living room, just centimeters left of his coffee table. Suga’s jaw dropped. He should have pushed all the furniture aside; Daichi could have phased right into the table, and _that_ would have been an unpleasant paradox to solve with magic—Daichi’s _leg_ existing in the same place as his coffee table—and the _fire_ in the _fireplace_ , what had Suga been _thinking?_

“Um,” Daichi said. “Hi.”

“Holy shit!” Suga leapt up from his chair and put a hand to Daichi’s elbow. “Are you okay?”

“I _feel_ okay,” Daichi said cautiously. “How do I look?”

_Not anemic, that’s for sure,_ Suga thought. He did a quick check-over—all of Daichi’s fingers and toes accounted for, no burns, although a wound on his forehead, _fuck_ , he really should have been wearing gloves. “Here, sit down,” Suga said, moving Daichi onto the couch. Suga took care of the cut as Daichi squinted to keep the blood from running into his eye. He sat without complaint as Suga cleaned the wound, relaxing his movements as it became clear Daichi wasn’t going to start radiating light this time around.

Suga smoothed wound-repairing salve over the cut and tilted Daichi’s face up to study him more closely. “ _Really_ think about it, Daichi. How do you feel?”

“Nervous,” Daichi said, taking Suga’s hand and removing it, gently, from his cheek. It was charming, and Suga was furious Daichi had the gall to be charming when he might be bleeding internally.

“I’m talking about your _organs_ , Daichi,” he snapped. “We need to make sure you’re okay _inside_ , too.”

Suga didn’t have an x-ray machine lying around, but he preferred a divination method for checking out patients’ insides, anyway. It took him longer than usual to enter the proper meditative state. Even with his eyes closed, he could feel Daichi’s straightforward gaze burning right through him—why not perform his _own_ divination if he was going to stare like that, Suga thought bitterly, and then the dice in his pocket felt hot and he slipped into mindfulness. He held his palms over Daichi’s major organs, feeling-but-not-feeling the shape of them. No empathetic signals of distress. With a sigh, Suga broke his state and dropped his hands on Daichi’s kidneys, where they’d been last.

“What’s the damage?” Daichi asked.  

“You’re okay,” Suga said. He was exhausted—from the relief of it, and the magic. “I’m making coffee. Do you want any?”

Daichi turned over on his back . “At one in the morning?”

“You’re right. I’ll make tea.” Suga felt Daichi watch him shuffle to his kitchenette.

Finally he joined Daichi on the couch. He turned his gaze on Suga, and Suga sank down, defeated. He was sick of being subjected to Daichi’s intense expressions. So dramatic. Daichi took this as an invitation and dropped his head on Suga’s shoulder.

“Is this okay?” Daichi asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Daichi said. “Good.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Daichi shifted, his upper arm pressed flat against Suga’s. On any other day he would have wrapped an arm around Daichi’s shoulder. But he was still shaking from all the excitement and wanted to hide it.

“I couldn’t tell you before,” Daichi started. “But I will now.”

“Why not before?” Suga asked.

“I was cursed,” Daichi said.

Oh. Duh. That explained away what had puzzled Suga about Daichi in the first place—how a person could look so honest, but omit so much.

Daichi continued. “It’s broken now. I killed them. There was a creature stalking a whole group of us in Sendai—we got transported to its dimension, and I think—I think I killed its god? Last time I was able to get us out of that dimension, and into the hospital. But I didn’t manage to finish it off. I had to go back and finish the job.”

Suga exhaled. “Did you study magic?”

“Business.”

“You killed the unholy spawn of an interdimensional _god_? With a _business_ degree?”

“No, the degree was not relevant to this particular professional experience.”

“Don’t go getting sarcastic on me, Sawamura-san.”

“Oh, right, I forgot you’re never sarcastic. _Sugawara-san_.”

Suga closed his eyes. “How did you get everyone to the hospital?”

Daichi shrugged; Suga felt it against his arm. “I’d been there a few times before. I mean, I grew up around here. I’d seen you around, you know.”

“It’s a big city.”

“You leave an impression.”

“Don’t flirt,” Suga scolded, though he didn’t mind a bit. Sometimes, when he looked at Daichi, he felt like he was the only one really _seeing_ him. He’d felt that way those few days in the hospital, like Daichi could fly under anyone’s radar. It made Suga want to point at him and say— _look! Don’t you see that!_ Like no one else believed how incredible this guy was. “You know,” Suga decided on saying, “the first moment I saw you, I thought you were a statue.”

Daichi grinned. “Are you saying I’m a work of art?”

Suga sat up on his knees, jabbing an accusing finger at Daichi.  “I thought you were a _cursed_ statue! A cursed one! I was not referring to your good looks!”

Daichi looked redder in the fire’s light.

“You saved all those people,” Suga said quietly.

Daichi shook his head. “You saw what condition they were in. Back in the ER.”

“But they were alive.”

Daichi’s shoulders crumpled slightly, and Suga could tell he was messed up inside about the whole situation.

“Daichi, they all _lived_. Everyone _lived_.” Suga grabbed his hands. Impulsively kissed them. Brought his hand to the fading burn on Suga’s neck. It was going to scar, but it seemed like such a small thing after all this.

“I’m sorry I lied,” Daichi said. He looked at Suga seriously. “I mean it, this time. Never again.”

Suga smiled. “Happy Halloween, Daichi,” he said quietly. And they sat there—each of them in one piece, on one couch, a scene Suga couldn’t have predicted for himself only a few weeks before—and let the crackling sound of the fire lull them asleep before the Halloween sunrise could spill in through the eastern window.


End file.
